olive – Gourmet Project

the recipe

This was a great appetizer, it’s basically a tapenade cut with roasted eggplant. I love eggplant, and I love olives, together they’re even better. Eggplant dips naturally tend to turn out a kind of grey-brown that’s not the most inviting. The olives helped it turn a delightful shade of purple with a nice lustre. Also, a straight ahead tapenade can be a bit too much olive, even for olive lovers. Using eggplant cut the intensity and made this very affordable. I’d say this was the best of both worlds. I like that all the saltiness of the dip came from the olives and capers, no need to add more.

The result here had loads of olive flavour, with the almost meaty background of the eggplant. It worked well as a dip, which I find nicer than having to spread a thin layer as you would with a more potent tapenade. This was a really solid recipe that I’d happily make again.

4. Fish en Papillote With Tomatoes and Olives p. 302

the recipe

This was less than the sum of it’s parts. A lot of good things went in: a couple nice halibut fillets, tomatoes, olives, red pepper flakes, orange zest, sage, wrapped and baked in parchment. What came out looked pretty, but tasted off. The individual flavors were good, but they didn’t meld particularly well. There was way more zest than I would have liked, and something unexpected and unpleasant in the sage-olive-fish combination. The fish was also a bit underdone, and you can’t put a papillote back together again (I finished in the microwave, but it didn’t help matters much). I think this one was a lot better in theory than it was on the plate. If I were to redo this I might replace the halibut with red snapper, and switch out the sage for thyme or basil. Overall there’s just way too much going on without much balance. There were about as many toppings as there were fish. Restraint might have improved it significantly.